It’s been a few years of movie making madness with myself and Justin Decloux. We started out with an experimental film called Ghost Scare and ramped up pretty quickly to finishing Teddy Bomb together, making lots of short films and finally culminating in our most recent project, Impossible Horror. We spend a lot of time talking about our passion for filmmaking and why we’re doing it, and how it hasn’t completely destroyed our brains or even our relationship so far. I personally consider myself quite lucky for that!

For me, Justin = Indie Film Inspiration. Also, a lot of fun.

And so, to get into the depths of our processes both together and apart, we’ve got TWO interviews with each other about Impossible Horror. Today, you get to read this interview with Justin Decloux where I ask the questions, and tomorrow you’ll get to read my interview where he will ask the questions.

If you have your own questions about the film, get your tickets for the world premiere of Impossible Horror on Monday, October 16 at 9:30 p.m. at the Scotiabank Cinema to see the film and meet the cast & crew at the Q & A after the film!

E: You’re Just-In-Time!

J: Thanks! That jokes never gets old.

E: That’s why you love me. So tell me, Justin – why did you decide to make a film? Aren’t films, like, hard to make?

It all seems so easy when you start! You write a script, you plan out the shooting blocks (when it seems totally manageable to shoot all nights for three weeks!) and you sit back and go “We’ll have this all wrapped up in a few months!” I really should have paid more attention to the fact that I was telling the story of a creative people driven insane from the impossibility of finishing their art.

The film turned my hair white! (Editor’s Note: No, it didn’t. His hair has been white since he was 17)

J: My last feature film TEDDY BOMB was an all out go-for broke action splatter comedy in the style of my favourite Hong Kong directors like Tsui Hark and Ching Siu-tung, but for IMPOSSIBLE HORROR I wanted to scale things back a little, and take inspiration from an unlikely place – Japanese horror films, especially the straight to video ones (A.K.A V-Cinema). The sub-genre has such specific rhythms and moods and it’s actually the antithesis to the style I usually gravitate toward – loud, big and in your face – so I thought it would be an interesting challenge to try to tell a story in a calmer mode – to a point (which you’ll understand when you see the film) I obviously riffed a lot on the work of Hideo Nakata and Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but the anything goes feel in the back half was directly powered by Takashi Miike and Sion Sono, two filmmakers that do everything simultaneously: Comedy, horror, drama, tragedy, and action often all appear within the same five minute span.

E: I heard you say you were also inspired by Lovecraft. Can we expect cool tentacle monsters!!!??

J: Well, I would temper your expectations of crazy monster action, but it’s true I was fascinated with Lovecraftian idea of a force so beyond human comprehension that it would drive a person to madness. I knew I couldn’t afford to build giant creatures, so I honed in on the horror of his creations. Plus, Lovecraftian insanity is all over J-Horror, so it was an easy fit. The toughest part was trying to balance the threat of an indescribable destructive presence and giving the characters goals and growth they can achieve. It helped once I figured out that the whole thing was going to hinge on struggling creatively.

E: Why a story about a filmmaker? Isn’t that a little narcissistic?

J: As a person who lives and breathes movies, I have a knee jerk reaction to wanting to tell stories about films and the art that surrounds them, which I realize is incredibly selfish, but it’s what I know! I didn’t want to make a ‘woe is me! How difficult it is to direct!’ story, but I did want to trace someone’s obsession with the art and how it shapes their life in an almost insidious way. The first few drafts were much obsessed with the concerns of making a movie, but with my co-writer Nate Wilson, we shaved some of that off to speak more universally about being creative. The filmmaking angle did allow to experiment with how I could tell the story as well.

E: Yea! About that! I saw there was some found footage style scenes in the film! What’s up with that?

J: I’ve always found that Found Footage was a stylistic form that had a lot of fun cinematic potential, so I really wanted to play in a sandbox that was fixed and technically simple, but it proved to be some of the most difficult things to shoot! You can write “They wander around in the dark of the woods,” very easily, but then you’re faced with the reality of finding woods in the middle of nowhere where the only light comes from a battery powered flashlight (that’s dying), your crew wonders who will be murdered first, and then it starts to rain.

The found footage element, which we shot on a T2I, also lead me to expand the film into a bit of a multi-media project with footage shot on phones, laptops and VHS. The only thing we didn’t use (which was in the script!) was Super 8 – cause $$$.

E: What was the hardest thing to do?

J: Props! Holy molee! What a pain in the butt! I would recommend writers rethink making a film that has 100+ props.

Truthfully, the shoot was extremely hard, mostly due to working nights and having a tiny crew, but we eventually got through it because we literally had no choice. Now, post-production was a whole other matter, as every technical problem we could possibly have (and some I didn’t even know existed) crushed my heart on a daily basis.

I have never felt more stressed in my life.

Thankfully, the two leads (Creedance and Haley) were extremely understanding and showed up whenever we needed them. The co-writer and producer Nate Wilson offered essential advice in shaping the film in post (while watching cut after cut), the cinematographer Aidan Tanner was always there to shoot more inserts, April Etmanski did all of the color on the film and Colin Cunningham saved my bacon with his invisible visual effects magic on two dozen shots that I assumed I was going to have to cut.

But most important of all, my partner Emily Milling carried the entire project on her back from start to finish. There is no way in hell I could have done it without her. She produced the film, she did the scheduling, she did catering, she did the makeup and special effects, she did all all the sound design, she recorded all the ADR, she mixed everything, she wrote all of the music and she checked everyone else’s work – ALL WHILE WORKING ANOTHER FULL TIME JOB.

E: You’re TOO sweet, Justin! You make my heart melt into a gooey mess of blood and tears of joy. Last question – what would be the one lesson you’d want to share with other filmmakers?

You can’t do this stuff alone. You really can’t.

It’s impossible.

What would you do if someone saw you in a play, asked you out for Affogato and offered you a part in an indie horror film? That’s what happened to actor, Haley Walker, who plays Lily in Impossible Horror which will have its world premiere at Toronto After Dark Film Festival on October 16, 2017 at 9:30 p.m. To get into her story, I wanted to interview Haley Walker about her experience with the film from start to finish, and how she developed the process to create Lily and keep her consistent throughout production.

E: Hi Haley, how’s it going?

H: Pretty good Emily!

E: So you were brought into Impossible Horror towards the end of pre-production as an actor playing the role of Lily. Can you tell our dear readers how you came to be involved with the film and what your first thoughts were when you read the script?

H: Well it was Nate (writer and producer) who first approached me with the role. We knew each other from high school, I was doing a play in the Toronto Fringe at the time and he came to see one of my shows. After the show he came up to talk to me and pitched the idea. We went to a cafe, got Affogato, sat in Trinity Bellwoods park for a long time…we talked for so long! He told me everything! I felt like this project was a big deal. When I first read the script I was like, whoaaaaa…this is unlike anything I’ve done before. I had never done a horror movie.

E: Do you think that you and Lily have any similarities? What are they? What are the big contrasts between you and your character?

H: Lily feeds off of the art that inspires her. I totally relate to that. I need creative outlets, too! She likes to bury herself in it, it’s like her energy source. There’s almost always a movie playing in her apartment, much like how I’m almost always listening to music. Sometimes I lose meaning in an album I love or a book I’m reading and it’s hard to get back into it. I feel disconnected, it’s like I’ve lost a bit of myself. But then I find something new, attach myself to that, and then after a while I can go back to where I was before and find new meaning where I couldn’t previously. I think Lily goes through a similar process. But I think she’s more gutsy than I am. She gets pushed to the point of exploring these things that haunt her, and she enjoys it. I couldn’t do that. If something was haunting me, I’d run away.

E: How did you begin to build out the character of Lily before we got to set? What techniques did you use to prepare? OR How did you build out the character of Lily throughout the shoot? What techniques did you use to prepare for filming each day?

H: I did a lot of staring at myself in the mirror, practicing facial expressions and saying lines. I do this a lot, actually. I talk to myself a bunch when I’m alone.

E: We shot the film over about a year and a half, and recorded some ADR and extra lines for your character here and there as it developed. How did you keep Lily consistent throughout this long timeframe? Even last month we had you in to record a few new lines – what did you do to get back into the Lily headspace?

H: This was so hard. Oh my god. Conversation with the director was super important for me & my process. There wasn’t much that I could do beforehand, just being in the space where we were shooting was what helped me. The fact that we did ADR and other sound stuff in the same apartment where we shot a lot of it was good for keeping me consistent. We’d always meet in that apartment regardless of where we were shooting, so I’d get into costume and do my makeup there. I became Lily in there every day. Just being in it brings me back to her.

E: Now that we know how you work – fill us in on what it was like for you to perform with the mental constraints of working in the middle of the night for two and a half weeks?

H: Wild. Just wild. I am not one for pulling all nighters anymore, at the time it wasn’t as hard as it is for me now. It was still hard though. I remember being totally content with napping on a cold, hard floor. That process was my first time working on a feature and also working with a cast & crew that doesn’t consist of my old friends or classmates, so I got early exposure to a different and, in some ways, more difficult process!

E: What was the hardest thing you faced during the shoot and how did you overcome it?

H: It was very hard to stay focused when everyone is running on a lack of sleep and we’re seeing each other basically every day for weeks straight. It got loopy. We all got loopy. There’s not much you can do in a situation like that besides check out after leaving the set. Leave it at the set and come back to it later, don’t take it with you. Even that was hard to do, but you do your best. And we had days off so I’d just relax on those days.E: What was your favourite scene to shoot? And what was your least favourite? Why?

H: My favourite scene to shoot was the first scene where Lily and Hannah meet. It was really exciting to shoot! All the running scenes and fighting scenes were so fun. My least favourite scene to shoot was probably that creepy doll scene, where everything in the apartment starts moving. That one was done in one shot and the doll kept falling over, I was so annoyed.

E: There’s a pretty significant dynamic and character shift in Lily from the start of the film to the end which is remarkable to watch on screen, it’s almost as if Lily becomes a completely different person. Can you walk us through the choices you made to bring Lily to such a dark place?

H: Well I think a lot of it came from outside factors. Despite shooting scenes out of chronological order, the jumps in time weren’t too drastic which helped me stay in touch with Lily’s transformation. The very first scene in the movie was the first scene we shot, and the very last scene was one of the last scenes we shot, so by that time I had been through so much. I had become comfortable in the apartment, comfortable with the cast & crew, I knew the story well…I had spent so much time with this film. I had time to get comfortable with Lily which made playing the shift easier. Plus, I was running on a messed up sleep schedule and my diet consisted of mostly bagels, so that definitely changed something in me. As I grew and changed, so did Lily.

E: What was the best experience you had on set?

H: Getting absolutely soaked in goo, blood, and whatever else you guys threw on me. I really love getting down and dirty for a film. And you guys were always very professional and adamant about health & safety so I felt comfortable!